1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a contents processing device for which there is a need to carry out communications with a server device located outside a local network to which the contents processing device is normally connected, and a gateway device for providing a service to mediate such communications on behalf of the contents processing device.
2. Description of the Background Art
Recently the rapid progresses of communication technology such as Internet and digital technology such as DVD (Digital Video Disk) are attracting much attentions from a variety of fields. These technologies are beginning to spread beyond the field of information communication to fields such as broadcasting, AV (Audio Visual) devices, home appliances, etc., and it is expected that the merging of various fields mentioned above will also progress rapidly in future.
In particular, even for a home where no sophisticated communication technology has been necessary up until now, the above noted progress of the communication technology is giving rise to new technologies such as applications to the data communication technology based on advance of the modem technology, to the home network technology such as IEEE 1394, etc.
Now, when further progresses in the digitalization and the networking of AV devices are made in future, there will arise a problem regarding handling of digital contents. Namely, there will be problems of improper copying or improper processing of the digital contents.
For this reason, there has been a proposition of a scheme for applying the cryptographic techniques to the above noted digital contents such that replay of digital contents is permitted only to those devices which are registered in advance.
There has also been a proposition of a scheme called Divx scheme in which the fact that the contents have been replayed is remembered by the AV device and a log history is notified to a charging server later on so as to realize the charging with respect to the replay, in addition to the above noted replay permission control. There are also many propositions of various other schemes such as a scheme for permitting replay only when the replay condition is satisfied, a scheme for permitting replay by obtaining a permission from an external license server even when the replay condition is not satisfied, and so on.
These schemes require the AV device to have a network function such that the required procedure can be carried out as the AV device carries out communications with a license server/charging server located on a public network.
Also, many of the future AV devices such as Internet TV and push button news delivery are expected to be those that presuppose the networking. Presently, a telephone network is the only available network infrastructure that is sufficiently developed up to the home environment, so that it is reasonable to expect that the communications with servers such as license server, charging server, news server, WWW server, etc. will be carried out through the telephone network except for some highly advanced environment.
However, the future AV devices to be introduced into the home are expected to have interfaces to a home network such as IEEE 1394. If such a future AV device is also to be connected to the telephone network as described above, it would become necessary to provide wirings for the home network and wirings for the telephone network connection so that the future AV device would inevitably become very complicated.
The same problem also arises when there is a need for a device connected to a local network to carry out communications with another device through a network other than that local network.